to pursue the main land with certainty from Icy Cape is unquestionably great; and the recollection that in that route every foot gained to the eastward is an advance toward the point whence supplies and succour may be obtained, is a cheering prospect to those who are engaged in such an expedition. But while I so far advocate an attempt from this quarter, it must not be overlooked that the length of the voyage round Cape Horn, and the vicissitudes of climate to be endured, present material objections to prosecuting the enterprise by that course. ..... Upon the whole, I am disposed to favour the western route, and am of opinion that could steam-vessels properly fitted, and adapted to the service, arrive in good condition in Kotzebue Sound, by the beginning of one summer, they would with care and patience succeed in reaching the western shore of Melville Peninsula in the next.'— p.564.

It is proper to observe, before we bid Captain Beechey farewell, that he bestows high and generous praise on all his officers without exception. The narrative and appendix contain ample evidence that they formed a most able and accomplished society; and we trust many of them will yet act together again in services of as great importance as that which has now been so well performed, and so elegantly recorded. We may say so elegantly illustrated too-for the engravings in this book are admirable things.

1831.

ART. III.—1. Two Lectures on Population, delivered before the University of Oxford. By Nassau William Senior, Professor of Political Economy. To which is added a Correspondence between the Author and the Rev. T. R. Malthus. 2. The Law of Population. A Treatise in Six Books, in disproof of the Superfecundity of Human Beings, and developing the Real Principle of their Increase. By Michael Thomas Sadler, M.P. Vols. I. and II. 1830.

3. Mr. Sadler's Reply to an Article in the Edinburgh Review, &c. 1831.

4. Letters on Systematic Colonization and the Bill now before Parliament, &c. By Charles Tennant, Esq., M.P. London,

1831.

IF there ever was a subject exceeding all others in general im

portance, and in which a right or a wrong conclusion may most materially influence the destinies of mankind-if there ever was a question demanding for its discussion, beyond all others, the most calm and candid deliberation, the completest freedom from all party or personal feelings, and an earnest and philosophical desire to search after Truth, and truth exclusively-this is that subjectthis is that question. Has it been hitherto approached in such

VOL. XLV. NO. LXXXIX.

H

spirit

spirit and temper? We fear we must answer in the negative. And in so doing we shall, perhaps, afford a clue to the enigma, that the opinions broached upon this great, and, in our view of it, simple question, have run into the most opposite and violent extremes; equally repugnant to common sense and experience, equally mischievous in their effects, whenever successfully propagated, and equally distant from the plain, intelligible, and useful truth, to which a more dispassionate and impartial inquiry must have led by a straight and easy route.

The question at issue may be simply stated thus :-Is there any natural tendency in the numbers of mankind to increase faster than their power of providing themselves with food? And if so, is this tendency an evil or a good? and can it be so regulated or modified, as to avert the evil, or augment the good it is calculated to produce?

How grossly this plain question has been mystified by the use, and as frequent abuse, of high-sounding scientific terms, such as superfecundity, law of population, geometrical and arithmetical ratios, inverse variation, and a hundred others-terms which obscure the argument they are intended to illustrate, unless previously defined, and which, if previously defined, would assuredly never have been employed as we find them-we need not attempt to prove to such of our readers as have paid any attention to the controversy which the doctrines on population have excited since the beginning of the present century; if, indeed, that can be called a controversy in which one party alone has been heard throughout in the tone of triumphant dogmatism, and but a few faint and feeble voices were raised in unsuccessful opposition.

The history of that controversy is shortly as follows. It is an ancient and popular, as it is likewise an obvious notion,—one of those old-fashioned opinions which, of course, one should be ashamed of wearing in the present day,-that the strength of a state lies in its numbers-that the numerical increase of a nation is an increase of its means for acquiring wealth, and for defending it when obtained, and, consequently, an increase of its aggregate strength and happiness. Hence, the respect and honours which, throughout ancient history, sacred as well as profane, seems to have been uniformly paid to the progenitors of a numerous offspring. Hence, in some instances, direct premiums have been held out for the encouragement of matrimony and the increase of families.

The scourges of war and pestilence have more or less depopulated states at various periods in the gloomy annals of mankind; but, in addition to the pangs they occasioned to their immediate victims, the rending of the ties of affection or relationship, and the

destruction

destruction of property, the actual loss of lives had been invariably lamented as a grievous injury to the suffering nations, up to the close of the last century. Then, for the first time, we believe, the opinion was propagated, that these calamitous events have their favourable side-that the evils of battle and of plague are partly compensated by the diminution of numbers they occasion-that population is always and everywhere pressing up to the limits of possible subsistence, and struggling against the inadequacy of the food that can be provided for its support-that the mass of mankind are, in consequence, necessarily in a state of extreme want, and that every check to their increase or direct diminution of their absolute numbers, is, pro tanto, a reprieve to the survivors, who, in the general scramble for the necessaries of life, divide more amongst themselves; until the continued increase, accelerated as it is by the formation of a temporary vacuum, once more brings their numbers closely up to the barrier against which they are fated to be eternally pressing, and restores the misery and extreme want which, under this theory, is, in the long run, the natural and necessary condition of human existence.

This is a gloomy and heart-withering picture; but it is a true representation of the doctrine promulgated, and with the utmost success, towards the close of the last century. When we call it the Malthusian theory, we do so only in compliance with popular authority, which has stamped it with that appellation. We are well aware that Mr. Malthus has no claim to the credit or the blame, whichever posterity may think right to award (and of both he has had his full share already) to the originator of this doctrine. There can be no doubt that he adopted, not merely its substance, but most of its details, and even the terms in which they are enounced, from the works of Townsend, Wallace, and other preceding writers. Though not original, these opinions were, however, brought forward by him in so striking and authoritative a manner, with the advantages of a polished style and eloquent language, a tone of philosophical inquiry, and the justificatory evidence of statistical details, as to attract far more attention than they had previously obtained, and irrevocably couple the name of Malthus with the theory they comprehend.

In describing that theory, we have had in view its character, as it appeared in the first edition of Mr. Malthus's Essay on Population, in 1798. We well know that in subsequent editions it has been greatly modified; some of its most objectionable portions removed, others softened off or explained away, and new portions introduced, till, like the silk stockings of the Vicar of Wakefield that had been so often mended with worsted, it is now become extremely difficult to say what the Malthusian theory is,

or what it is not, or whether any such theory remains at all in existence.

When the opinions of Mr. Malthus have been attacked, his friends have habitually exclaimed that his meaning was misrepresented or misunderstood, that the apostle is not to be made answerable for the exaggeration of his doctrines by his blundering disciples, and the master's fame and system, it was asserted, stood ever uninjured and invulnerable. But it will not be denied that from 1798, when the Essay on Population first appeared, to the publication in 1803 of the second edition, where the preventive check,' which, like Aaron's serpent, has since swallowed up the rest of its species, was first introduced, the Malthusian theory consisted of the broad and naked proposition, that the increase of population is, as well in fact as by necessity, everywhere kept down to the level of the means of subsistence by the checks of vice and misery alone.

With what views or motives Mr. Malthus's Essay was penned, it is scarcely fair, nor is it worth while to inquire; but politicians saw in it an excuse for the evils, under which the lower classes might at any time be suffering, fully sufficient to be an answer to all reproaches on their score, and to exculpate every government from the blame of causing the misery of the people under their sway. It was exceedingly convenient to an ignorant or idle statesman to be able to prove, philosophically and statistically, that poverty and extreme misery are irremediable,-the necessary condition of the lower classes in every country under the sun-and thus to reconcile his conscience to the spectacle of their existence in that over whose destinies he presided. Nay, to many private individuals, rolling in wealth, and environed by starving fellow-creatures, it was not disagreeable to be assured, on high authority, that even though they should literally obey the divine precept, to sell all their goods, and give to the poor,' they could in no way reduce the sum of human calamity, which would increase upon them faster than by any efforts of charity and benevolence it could be diminished. Under this persuasion, they might continue their career of selfish indulgence and wanton luxury, undisturbed by the visitings of selfreproach for their neglect of the wretched victims of famine, to whom the crumbs from their overloaded tables would be as manna from heaven. In one word, the Malthusian theory absolves wealth and power from all responsibility for the misery which may surround them. No wonder, then, that it was favourably received, made many converts, and took its post as the reigning philosophy of the day.

It was this doctrine, we repeat, as enounced in the Quarto of 1798, which gained Mr. Malthus his great European reputation.

But

But in 1803 appeared a second edition of the Essay, which the author himself calls, in his preface, a New Work, retaining but few parts of the former;' and in which he introduces another, and a completely new, check to the increase of population, which he had discovered in the interval-viz., the preventive check' of moral or prudential restraint upon the indulgence of the sexual appetite, at least in the way of marriage. We need not say that this new light was wholly destructive of the main principle established, as it was thought, conclusively, in the first essay, of the inevitable poverty of the lower classes; since a due cultivation of the prudential check, which is described as involving no evil in itself, may be not only supposed, but proved, it was said, by the experience of many countries, wholly to prevent any sufferings from too near an approach of population to the limits of subsistence. With whatever inconsistency, however, and, as if not thoroughly satisfied of the efficacy of his last-invented and favourite panacea-the preventive check-Mr. Malthus continued, throughout successive editions of his work, to consider the tendency of population to increase with extreme rapidity, as a source of misery difficult, if not impossible, to be successfully counteracted, and the one great, full, and sufficient cause of all the poverty to be met with on the face of the globe. In every version of the Principle of Population,' down to the very latest, its essence has always been, that population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence, and is only limited by positive famine, disease, the consequence of famine, vice, or moral restraint, that is, the exercise of a prudential abstinence from marriage.

Now we own that few things have ever appeared to us so unaccountable as that this proposition should have been so long received with implicit faith, as an established and incontrovertible 'principle' of science; when there are numberless facts, obvious to the most cursory observation, which completely and directly falsify it. We will not speak of Poland, Prussia, and parts of Russia, because, from the peculiar relations of society in those states, the very lowest class, we believe, may suffer from insufficiency of food, at times when the country as a whole is glutted with provisions. But we ask, if the situation of almost every colony that has been settled in America or Australia, during the last two or three centuries, does not offer an unanswerable refutation to this principle? Is not the great drawback to all such establishments the want of a market for their surplus provisions? And is not this want felt for years together in every colony settled in fertile land and a favourable climate? So far from their numbers being limited by the want of subsistence, their only difficulty

arises